UMAT NIE - The National Institute of Education

A Proud History Rooted in Academia

National Institute of Education (NIE) was founded in 1999 on solid principles of consistency, authenticity, transparency and student empowerment. NIE is a member of the Australian Tutoring Association (ATA), and we pride ourselves on meeting all recommendations by the Department of Fair Trading for families looking for a legitimate tuition organisation to guide you on your most important journey to excellence.

NIE are the leading providers of UCAT (previously UMAT) and Medical Interview preparation courses in Australia and New Zealand. In partnership with KAPLANInstitute and association with MedifyUK (leaders of UCAT preparation providers in UK) has once again put NIE at the forefront of the medical admission test preparation in Australia and New Zealand. Our approach – and our high numbers of students qualifying into medical careers across the country – make us substantially different from any other types of similarly-advertised course in the supplementary education industry.

You have most likely been guided to our services from the Career Adviser at your school, so please call us directly to have any further questions about the UCAT, interviews, career in health and your exam preparation options answered.

You may also enjoy more detailed information about NIE featured on My Health Career.

Prepare with UCAT Training Specialists & Education Professionals

NIE specialists are trained in areas of Medicine, Advanced Science, Education and Teaching, Psychology, Adolescent Development and Test Performance.

Our teachers are experienced and committed to the standards of excellence in education and teaching. NIE is supported by expert staff and advisors including teachers accredited by the Department of Education and Training, a range of Health Care Professionals, University Academics, and Practicing Clinicians. NIE's teachers are all mature-age academics and holders of WWCC card (Working With Children Check). NIE has also been endorsed by Accredited Tutor, contributors to the development of the Child Safe Standards in relation to the new child safe standards legislation that took effect 1st January 2017.

When UMAT was around...

Why did people refer to NIE as the First, Original, Authentic, and the Best UMAT Preparation Course Provider?

Nineteen years ago, before UMAT Preparation Courses became a lucrative online industry in Supplementary Education, where unscrupulous online sellers upload and sell the same electronic practice materials to aspiring medical students year-after-year, there was a different way to approach qualitative preparation for UMAT, the competitive Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test.

NIE’s Founder, Simon Christie, worked within health science areas in various Australian Universities, and after decades in academia, he found himself continually dismayed at the poor quality and misleading nature of the university preparation courses available to forward-thinking students. Apart from measuring psychological constructs, the UMAT also measures a prospective student’s ability to: perform under pressure in a familiar environment; task switch between alternating constructs (since 2012); manage their exam time; judge which questions require superficial or deeper cognition; communicate choices via analogy; recognise when to avoid or apply intuition/empathy/bias; and much more.

NIE, as Australia’s and New Zealand's longest running UMAT preparation course provider, recognised early on that a purely commercially-based paradigm would not be appropriate to this type of test preparation. As an organisation genuinely committed to seeing the best and brightest minds attain coveted medical places across all universities, coaching services must be formulated and implemented in a precise and consistent way which not only leverages those set to excel, but also polishes the ‘rough diamonds’ who simply need a science-based and psychologically-sound approach to unlocking their own UMAT potential.

Serious scholarship and preparation can and should be applied in executing a successful UMAT result. An earnest approach towards preparation during Year 10, 11 and 12 will help students develop the knowledge, skills and strategies to gain entry to the medical field. Although most students never reach the end of UMAT in the time allowed, a student who correctly enacts NIE’s exam performance strategies has a higher chance of completing more answers, and completing them correctly. Every moment is precious. Students who commit to NIE’s UMAT Preparation Program have a crucial cognitive advantage over others in time and accuracy.

How is NIE Notably Different from Competitors?

As you will discover with a small amount of research, National Institute of Education has no genuine competitors. Amazingly, still today, nineteen years later, NIE is the only UMAT coaching service that continually researches the UMAT every year in order to develop and provide students with the most relevant and up-to-date exam preparation resources and knowledge.

We are the original and the best UMAT and Medical Interviews preparation provider in Australia and New Zealand.

We are the only UMAT Preparation Course Provider that supplies hardcopy UMAT books supported by face-to-face UMAT workshops.

Whereas other providers will not face the cost of employing specialists (in education, medicine, psychology, testing, and other areas), nor the costs of regular test development, printing of hardcopy books, worldwide postage, and individually tailored services – NIE is committed to bearing these costs yet still manages to offer some of the most affordable UMAT training programs on the market.

Unlike unscrupulous providers, who gather new student sign-ups by ‘ghosting’ in UMAT forums, we depend on industry leaders, Career Advisors, health organisations and past students to spread the word about us.

We recognise that acquiring skills to enter medicine or dentistry does not start and end with sitting the UMAT – and we enter continuity of services to help students excel in early high school, and in GAMSAT, and Medical Interview Preparation.

As an aptitude test, UMAT cannot be prepared for like a bar exam or a test of learned knowledge. In fact, the wrong type of preparation for UMAT can take students’ valuable attention away from their Year 10, 11 and 12 studies at a critical time, endangering their chances of realising their dreams to practice medicine. This is the exact same reason why ACER has consistently advised students to be wary of typical courses claiming to train you up to beat the UMAT! We all want the best doctors representing the next generation in healthcare, and hence you should genuinely be prepared to improve your capacity for thinking and understanding on a fluid level, that is, the skills relevant to the UMAT itself.

UMAT prep courses can only be measurably valuable if they make a student faster, surer, and more exact on a cognitive level, and this can ONLY be attained with tangible written materials that resemble the actual exam that will be undertaken in real life. Put quite simply, the strategies that are taught to you by NIE are pattern-based in nature, enhanced by provision of intelligently-designed cognitive strategies, crystallised via familiarity, honed by intuition (a prerequisite for any timed test), and suitable for neuroplastic enhancement of aptitude as you become faster, surer and better.

Our UMAT specialists travel the country to meet students face-to-face in our intimate workshops, and our hard-copy tests which you receive in the mail are not only informationally-rich but also tangible tools that will build your test-taking powers until you see confidence in improvement across: Construct 1 (Logical Reasoning and Problem Solving); Construct 2 (Understanding People); and Construct 3 (Non-verbal Reasoning).

“Since I started with NIE, I am suddenly much faster and definitely more accurate on all non-verbal reasoning UMAT Construct 3 questions. I now know various strategies to utilise when attempting questions; I know when to relax and let my subconscious mind blank out various shapes on the page. My favourite trick is colouring my answers according to levels of surety – because now that I’m so fast, I easily have time to go back and work on my least-sure questions first! My parents can’t believe my improvement. Every time I start on a new NIE test paper, I know I’ll be finishing this one faster, and with a higher score than the last.” ~ T. N. (UNSW Medicine Graduate 2009) ~

Can Hardcopy UMAT Practice Exams Really Make That Much Difference?

Part of our success with students is because we are the only UMAT course provider to supply hardcopy (paper-based) exam preparation books, as opposed to commercial online courses.

“Research has shown memory retrieval is most efficient when the sensory tools used in practice mimic those of the real exam. Don’t be fooled by training organisations who offer you limited online subscriptions to virtual resources instead of real, hard copy papers.”

We teach via hardcopy books. Don’t be fooled by training websites that offer you limited online subscriptions to virtual resources instead of real, hardcopy UMAt test papers. For this important 3-hour examination, you must use physical resources for maximum benefit.

In UMAT Construct 1 and 2, you need to visually prioritise areas of text, make notes, underline, highlight, and cross-check information in order to gain understanding of the stimulus' content and the questions. Some UMAT questions are so long and complex that the eye of the reader will enact different strategies depending on the mode of communication. This has been shown to effect variables such as text reading time, amount of information retrieved, and accuracy of recall.

In UMAT Construct 3, it is difficult to gain the required knowledge and understanding of the essential concepts without being able to draw diagrams using mapping methods or pick the middle XY-axis methods, or without being able to check angles of elements' rotations, sketch, cross out segments, etc. NIE specifically teaches the most effective strategies for fast and reliable reasoning, and some types of logicians will realise early on the advantages of tilting pages as they rotate shapes, or marking questions in order to return to them later.

And unlike numerous websites that offer online UMAT courses and non-printable digital UMAT resources, we do not limit our students to a timed online course subscription. One you enrol with NIE, you will own our valuable UMAT books forever, and can even reference them during your other studies. Our students become our family – we DO NOT charge any membershipor subscription fees - and that means you will receive the required UMAT preparation support, and work with us for multiple years if needed, at no extra cost.

“Once I enrolled with NIE in Year 10, I received UMAT support at any time I needed it. I was always updated with any relevant UMAT information until my UMAT date in Year 12! I was enrolled with NIE for entire 3 years, and never had to pay anything extra to access the UMAT teachers whenever I had to clarify anything or gain better understanding on solving particular styles of UMAT questions”

~ Y.H. (Monash, Medicine Graduate 2012) ~

Testimonials

I have done the interview training (personal one) with tutor and was great and awesome. I strongly recommend you guys to do it with NIE tutor as we can get very important informati...

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